Tigers sign Valverde to minor league deal

The Detroit Tigers insisted all along that they were not in the market for a closer, even should prized prospect Bruce Rondon fail to immediately claim the job they felt would eventually be his.

And there was no market for the Tigers’ deposed closer, Jose Valverde, in the offseason, as agent Scott Boras failed to deliver on the multi-year deal he was supposedly seeking for the veteran.

Two games into the season, and those two courses changed a bit, eventually merging, as on Thursday, the Tigers took a low-risk flyer on the 35-year-old Valverde.

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“From my position, you leave no stone unturned. You do whatever you can to make your club better,” Tigers GM and president Dave Dombrowski told reporters in Minnesota, including the Detroit News’ Tom Gage, moments before the start of Thursday’s matinee game against the Twins, noting that they weren’t “just signing him as a favor.”

Now the Tigers have a month to find out if Valverde can make them better.

The minor-league deal, which includes an out clause if Valverde is not on the major league roster by May 5, has no commitment for anything more, but Dombrowski told reporters that parameters of an additional deal had been discussed if the trial works out.

Valverde will start in extended spring training, then work his way up to Toledo.

“It’s a situation where we’re not looking to prolong this. It’s a situation where he can either pitch and come back and help us here or we probably end that relationship at that time,” Dombrowski told reporters, including MLive’s Chris Iott.

There were those who thought that the relationship had already ended for good, especially after Dombrowski made it clear right after the World Series that the team would not pursue Valverde as a free-agent. Not after his two meltdowns in the postseason (leaving him with an ERA of 30.38 and a blown save), following a regular season when he’d been a pedestrian 35-for-40 in save chances.

And he’d been imminently hittable with by far the lowest strikeout rate (6.3 per nine innings) of his career, having morphed into a one-pitch pitcher, all but abandoning his once-successful split-finger fastball.

“We saw a little fall-off last year, and it wasn’t just during the postseason,” Dombrowski told reporters, including Iott. “So we had come to the conclusion that we were going to really move on from that scenario. … We’re open-minded and if he’s throwing better and he can be our guy, great. That’s it. We’re open to that.”

It was pretty clear, though, that the Tigers were never open to paying Valverde anything close to the $9 million he made in 2012, on the option year of deal the Tigers signed him to in 2010.

But they might have been interested in Valverde at a lower price.

There was always a glimmer of that from manager Jim Leyland, even though he adamantly dismissed the idea in early March, saying it had “never been discussed.”

That wasn’t always the story.

“It’s hard to go out and get a closer, because when somebody’s got a real good closer, they normally keep him. We’ve had a real good closer, and probably because of instances that have happened towards the end, it’s probably better to let him test the market,” the manager said in the immediate aftermath of the World Series.

“I don’t know if Dave touched on this, but there could be a chance, when all is said and done, if all of a sudden things fall through the cracks, Valverde might be available at some type of a role.

“Maybe Dave has totally ruled it out. But I don’t think — I think there’s a possibility. You think these guys are just going to go out, and everybody’s going to be after them, and will give them what they want, and everybody’s happy ever after. It doesn’t work that way. There’s a lot of times you get a guy late that, for whatever reason, people didn’t really go for him like you thought. And you might get him for the price you want, and all of a sudden, you got something.”

With no apparent takers for Valverde’s services, even after he threw for scouts — including the Tigers — in the Dominican Republic, the Tigers were able to get him back on more reasonable terms.

Dombrowski insisted that it wasn’t an overreaction to the first blown save of the season — when Phil Coke couldn’t close out Wednesday’s eventual 3-2 loss — as he’d been talking with Boras all offseason.

“It’s really also the first time he has basically said to me, ‘Go ahead and take a look at him,’ ” Dombrowski said, according to Iott, of the conversations with Boras throughout Wednesday evening and night.

“We figure we have nothing to lose and he’s open-minded to it. I’m sure he wouldn’t have agreed to it a few months ago,” Dombrowski told Gage.

Matthew B. Mowery covers the Tigers for Journal Register Company. Email him at matt.mowery@oakpress.com and follow him on Twitter @matthewbmowery.